Recently I haven\u2019t read many kids books but I had heard good things about this one. While reading it I was reminded of all the characteristics of a good book for kids: a likable group of heroes coming off of hard times, bad guys, older bullying children, and hopefully a memorable gross-out scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All these and more were contained in this story, and I think with a little judicious editing it might have been a better book for me. The adventure starts off in a clever way (literally), but the middle of the book went on just a bit too long for my taste. The wrap-up was satisfying and covered all the loose ends in a cute and heart-warming way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also liked all the wordplay and puzzles in the story – aimed at kids but hilariously I struggled with quite a few of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The book has a lot of messaging in it – wholesome stuff about supporting your friends no matter what, doing your best in the face of adversity, and the benefits of not spending life alone (or plugged into a TV\/device). I think some kids might feel like these messages might be a little overstressed, but I\u2019m a long way from being a kid in modern society so I guess I\u2019ll defer to the author\u2019s judgement on this one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next I am reading Ghost Story by Peter Straub.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently I haven\u2019t read many kids books but I had heard good things about this one. While reading it I was reminded of all the characteristics of a good book for kids: a likable group of heroes coming off of hard times, bad guys, older bullying children, and hopefully a memorable gross-out scene. All these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Books: The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-3874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-10u","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}